Kerry Says Iran Has Received Only $3bn Since JCPOA

US Secretary of State John Kerry said Iran has recovered only around $3 billion of frozen assets since it finalized a nuclear deal with six world powers.

“Remember the debate over how much money Iran was going to get? Sometimes you hear some of the presidential candidates putting out a mistaken figure of $155 billion. I never thought it would be that,” Kerry said to delegates at a dinner hosted by the progressive pro-Israel group J Street, AFP reported on Monday.

He added that others think that the windfall would be about $100 billion because there was supposedly about $100 billion that was frozen and so forth.

“We calculated it to be about $55 billion, when you really take a hard look at the economy and what is happening,” he said, giving the usual State Department estimate.

“Guess what folks. You know how much they have received to date? As I stand here tonight, about $3 billion.”

Tehran and the Group 5+1 (Russia, China, the US, Britain, France and Germany) reached the nuclear deal on July 14, 2015 and started implementing it on January 16.

The comprehensive nuclear deal, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), terminated all nuclear-related sanctions imposed on Iran.

Some key themes of the sanctions included draconian bans against investing in Iran’s oil and gas projects, selling planes to the country and also developing the Iranian auto industry among many other issues. Also, a central part of the sanctions concerned blocking Iran’s assets in overseas banks and putting restrictions on Iran’s banking transactions with the international financial institutions.